Honda’s 2012 Civic Natural Gas car

Rising gasoline prices and a boom in domestic production of natural gas are reviving interest in consumer vehicles that run on compressed natural gas.

U.S. automakers are introducing several natural-gas pickups for sale this year. At the same time, a viable network of public fueling stations may finally be on the horizon, thanks to new technologies, substantial private investment and solid political support for clean, domestic fuels.

“It’s really a great time for natural gas to make a strong play in the market,” said Mike Ferry, transportation program manager at the California Center for Sustainable Energy.

Formidable hurdles still stand in the way of natural-gas cars becoming a familiar sight in American driveways. Consumers have relatively few places to fuel up, only a handful of vehicles to choose from and a bigger upfront investment than buying a standard vehicle.

San Diego resident Bret Marquis bought a natural-gas-powered sedan four years ago, a choice that is now paying economic dividends. He fills up his Honda Civic on compressed natural gas, or CNG, for less than half the price of what most other motorists pay for regular gasoline.

“Gasoline pricing is scary,” said Marquis, who lives in Hillcrest and usually fills up seven miles away at a Kearny Mesa natural-gas station operated by San Diego Gas & Electric.

The national average for regular gasoline this week reached $3.83 a gallon, up 16 percent from the start of the year ($3.30), according to the Energy Information Administration.

San Diego pump prices are among the highest in the nation, hovering around $4.38 gallon on average this week.

Meanwhile, natural-gas commodity prices have dropped 24 percent this year amid mild weather and record production, a consequence of new exploration techniques involving horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

In San Diego, CNG is selling for $1.92 to $2.95 for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. Filling up at a CNG station is just like pumping gasoline, although the fuel is a highly compressed gas, not a liquid.

Cheap domestic supplies of natural gas have turned energy markets upside down during the past year. Energy companies, including San Diego-based Sempra Energy, are racing to build liquefied-natural-gas export terminals to access world markets.

Not surprisingly, natural-gas producers are investing in technology that can accelerate the adoption of natural gas as a transportation fuel in the U.S.

Chesapeake Energy, the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas, has announced a $1 billion fund to invest in companies that develop infrastructure and technology to increase the use of natural gas as a motor fuel.

This month, Chesapeake said it will collaborate with GE to develop a modular CNG fueling station, called “CNG in a Box,” that compresses pipeline gas for refueling fleets or selling natural gas to the public. The partnership also aims to improve refueling technologies for the typical home.

California-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a natural-gas provider backed by oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, aspires to install natural-gas pumps at 150 truck stops nationwide in the next few years.